Every family is different, which means every family has an interesting story to tell around the holidays. Some families are loud and obnoxious, while other families never know what to talk about.

My mom and her identical twin sister were adopted by a predominantly white family, meaning I’m not blood related to half of my relatives and they’re all white. But the majority of my dad’s family has rather traditional and old school beliefs on race and religion which makes things interesting. The grandmother on my dad’s side was very baffled by my dad’s announcement that he was getting married… to a black woman.

Around these family holidays, my mom’s family comes over to our house to enjoy my dad’s amazing cooking but my dad’s side is very distant. We don’t see them very much because we come from “different worlds.” Whenever we do see them, we have very awkward conversations that make us notice how little we know about each other and have in common.

Because my mom and aunt were adopted by a white family, all of our extended family is white. Both of my brothers somehow managed to look completely white which leaves me looking a little out of place. My mom, aunt, cousin, and I are pretty clearly not white so sitting down to a family meal looks rather interesting. My brother looks almost exactly like my dad and I look a lot like my aunt and my mom. Our very curly hair sets us apart from the rest of the family.

Sometimes I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb when all of the kids in the family go to take a picture. All of these tall kids are lined up with these shorter sometimes blonde kids, but then my little curly head is always sticking out pretty obviously.

It’s really interesting to try to explain how I don’t look anything like the rest of my family. My cousin and I often get confused as siblings which I never understood as a kid but now I understand it; my brother is “too white” to be my little brother.

From the outside, our family probably looks interesting and most people would assume it’s due to marriage or something along those lines but, it isn’t. Even though our family wouldn’t be considered or look anything like the “traditional” family, we sure know how to make annual family meals interesting.